Over the weekend I finished rereading I’ve Got Your Number, a novel from best-selling author Sophie Kinsella (I first read this book several years ago).
I’m a big Kinsella fan, and I’ve read most of her books, including all the books so far in the Shopaholic series.
She always seems to be adding another one to the mix.
I loved I’ve Got Your Number.
In typical Kinsella style, the story starts with a somewhat dippy, but charmingly quirky young woman (in this book her name is Poppy Wyatt) who has a problem.
A BIG problem.
Poppy has just lost her engagement ring.
Gulp! The one that’s been in her fiancé’s family for three generations.
But then things get worse.
During a fire drill at a hotel (where she’s enjoying tea with her friends), Poppy’s phone is stolen.
Now she’s really in a panic because if the hotel finds her ring later they can’t call her to tell her.
But then she suddenly sees a phone in a trash can in the hotel lobby.
Someone seems to have just thrown the phone away, so she decides it’s perfectly fine if she keeps it.
Well…as you can imagine, this doesn’t turn out to be a wise choice – or does it?
Kinsella’s main characters always seem to make an initial wrong choice that gets them in hot water.
Then they continue to make wrong choices until finally, somehow all these wrong choices turn out to be right choices in the end.
After I finished reading I’ve Got Your Number, I was curious to see what other readers thought of the book, so I went to amazon.com to read the reviews.
Wow! There were over 300 reader reviews!
And while a few of the reviewers really hated the book, I wasn’t surprised to find that most of the reviewers loved it!
I was also not surprised that the very things so many people loved about the book, were the exact same things those other reviewers hated about the book—which brings me to the point of this post.
And that is, best-selling authors tend to write books that are very much alike.
That’s not by accident.
And it’s not because they can’t write books that are totally different.
They write books that are so much alike because when they get a formula for success, they tend to reuse that formula over and over again.
And that’s because they know the formula will help them create a book that MOST of their readers will want and like.
If you’re a writer, you can learn a lot from Sophie Kinsella and other best-selling authors.
Mainly, you can learn not to be afraid to create your own success formula; One you can use over and over again to create new books.
Sure. When the reviews come out some people will slam your books because they’re too much alike.
But if you build a fanbase of loyal readers, they’ll expect you to write books that are very similar to each other.
And when you do, they’ll love you for it.
And they’ll love your books!
If you’re a Morning Nudge subscriber, log into our Private Resource Library and download our Deconstruct Template and use it to deconstruct I’ve Got Your Number to learn more about the formula Kinsella uses.
Note: This post may contain some affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more)! Read my full disclosure and privacy policies...
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